And Then There Were None: Kellingley Colliery closes

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Last deep pit in Britain shuts

It was bitter and political in the end; I suppose given the history of the industry this was inevitable. A sad day.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I don't know why newspapers are reporting this as "no more coal being produced domestically". There are still a bunch of opencast mines open.

Obviously this isn't a shock nor an immense tragedy on the scale of what happened in the 80's and 90's, but still sad, partially for sentimental reasons (though I dislike the coal industry) and partially on the parts of these 450 men and their dependents.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't know why newspapers are reporting this as "no more coal being produced domestically". There are still a bunch of opencast mines open.

That's because they are ignorant fyckwits. There's also some drift mining in South Wales (which like opencast mining can be more 'responsive' to price changes).

[Cubby]

Richard Llewellyn must be rolling over in his grave.

West Virginia could learn a thing or two from Wales. When coal mining ends, you don't need to have a temper tantrum and swing massively to the Conservatives (both upper and lowercase "c" in this case).

[Intell]

Environmentalists probably sheering this on, anyways this is very sad and I wish things were done to prevent this from happening. Give these workers, and these people and the area funds to create business and green energy to transfer workers.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

This is such a telling graph..

As my knowledge of energy politics in the UK is limited, I can't say much but UK's energy mix strikes me as being quite similar to the energy mix in the US yet we've seen nothing on the scale of the coal pit closures in the UK up until recently, with the discovery of plentiful shale gas. That, combined with the increased importation of coal to the UK, leads me to believe that there was something distinctly political about the wholesale destruction of coal mining. I know this isn't a novel point but it is stunning to an outside observer that energy policy could be driven by crass political self-interest alone rather than, you know, prudence.

just ugh...

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Since the UK has done a better job than the US in enforcing its mine safety laws, it's more expensive to mine deep pit coal there than here. And certainly more expensive than many of the other places the UK has been importing coal from.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yes, that's ehy I think it is dangerous to overromantice the industry on account of its radical and important history to left-wingers. That powerful union tendency only came about via Newton's Third LAw: the unions were only as powerful as management were odious. Working conditions were (and are, in countries where the pit mines still run) outright criminal. Even in this relatively small and modern mine that just closed, there have been 17 deaths - it's not a nice job even at the best of times. The coal industry worldwide has been horrendously greedy and has effectively killed itself off: producing oversurplus to feed a China that "would always grow", shredding its workforce to the extent it lost its monolithic appeal (coal execs binding themselves to the Republican party alone was a method straight of short-term profit, long-term stupidity on their part). It's not really a question of if coal is collapsing, its how should the death be managed. Perhaps environmentalists and coal workers could team up and attack open cast mines (like the gigantic one that infest Australia)?

[Slow Learner]

Not coal's biggest fan, but I suppose this is rather sad for those people who supported the miner's strike.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

yet we've seen nothing on the scale of the coal pit closures in the UK up until recently, with the discovery of plentiful shale gas.

Actually you did: most of the remaining large mines in the Appalachian coalfields shut in the 1980s and 1990s. But their output was replaced by huge opencast works in the western US and by increasingly absurd (given geography) opencast works and - urgh - more small drift mines in those older coalfields.

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The Tories never forgave the miners for 1974: the pit closure programme of the mid 1990s (which was the real death of the industry) was nakedly political. But even now, note that the closure of these last deep collieries was directly triggered by the government removing the subsidy system set up by the 1997-2010 Labour government...

[Ban my account ffs!]

yet we've seen nothing on the scale of the coal pit closures in the UK up until recently, with the discovery of plentiful shale gas.

Actually you did: most of the remaining large mines in the Appalachian coalfields shut in the 1980s and 1990s. But their output was replaced by huge opencast works in the western US and by increasingly absurd (given geography) opencast works and - urgh - more small drift mines in those older coalfields.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Tories never forgave the miners for 1974: the pit closure programme of the mid 1990s (which was the real death of the industry) was nakedly political. But even now, note that the closure of these last deep collieries was directly triggered by the government removing the subsidy system set up by the 1997-2010 Labour government...

One of the major reasons Peg Thatcher was so into the greenhouse theory was to spite the coal miners.  What better way to spite them than to argue that destroying their livelihoods was saving the planet.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Rather unfortunate for the men in their late 40s-early 50s (as a lot of the men in the article are). They're too young to retire but don't have enough working life left that education or training for a career change would yield any return on investment.

Rather unfortunate is rather an understatement.  For most of these guys, life is pretty much over.  Now it's just becoming obese and dying by 70.  And the powers that be are more than happy to give them that.